Chapter 688 Hollowfication
But even though Sona was able to meet the Xenos with Fels secretly, the dialogue immediately broke down citing that they can't trust anyone right now as their comrades were captured by their hunters.
As Fels and Sona followed them, their trails stopped at the eastern wall of the 18th floor. However, the moment Sona came into the vicinity, the strange orb that Kisuke gave her before he left suddenly activated and opened a well-hidden door for them.
It didn't take long for Sona and Fels to find the Xenos battling the Ikelos Familia. Although the Xenos were in an advantageous position, the Captain of the Ikelos Familia, Dix Perdix, was still able to calmly explain the place they were standing now, was the man-made Dungeon Knossos.
But once the members of the Ikelos Familia started complaining, Dix finally made his move and used the only Magic he knew of, Phobetor Daedalus. As the wave of red light touched the Xenos, they immediately lost their sanity and started hallucinating and attacking their fellow Xenos.
Fels put up a shield and urged Sona to come behind him. But Sona didn't listen as she summoned her halberd and dashed towards the red wave. Sona was confident that she won't be affected by such Magic and that's what Serafall thought too when she saw it. So instead of defending, it was a good time to attack with the opponent's guard down.
But the moment she passed through the red wave, she suddenly stopped moving and shouted in pain.
Kisuke, Yoruichi, and Kuroka who're casually listening became serious and increased their attention.
"Kuroka, since Serafall could easily describe what's happening, she's probably spying on Sona. Take a look if there's any video feed."
Kuroka paused the playback and immediately looked through the attached files and indeed found several of them. Finding the matching file, Kuroka resumed the playback now with an image projecting on top of the orb that only they could see.
From there, they could see Sona on her knees, wheezing and with strange white matter ejecting out of her mouth, covering a fourth of her face. As the white matter formed a familiar mask, even though it's just her lower left face, her left eye had also undergone a transformation with her sclera turning jet black and her pupil turning golden.
"Hollowfication!?" Yoruichi exclaimed and immediately looked at Kisuke, "What's going on!?"
Before answering, Kisuke first arranged the information in his head, "Remember when we fell into Hades' trap?"
"Yes..."
"It wasn't just Sona's body that was corroded, but also her soul. Without much choice, I had to transfer some of my Hollow-factor directly to her soul in an attempt to aid her mending. I wasn't able to remove it since her soul was still very weak back then and any changes might cause her harm instead."
"At some point, she was already completely healed and I tried to remove the Hollow's remnant, but when I saw how it melded with her soul so well, I decided to leave it alone and thought that maybe Sona would be able to make use of it in the future."
"I knew that the Hollow could manifest anytime now, so I left some safety measures on her in case something unfavorable transpired. But since none of them activated, it means that this was a safe manifestation and Serafall also didn't call for any emergency."
Yoruichi sighed and said, "Well, you'll probably get an earful from Serafall when you return so I'll just leave it to her what she wants to do with you."
"It's been a while now, so maybe she already forgot about it, nyaa?"
Yoruichi and Kisuke looked at her and said simultaneously, "No way!"
Putting back their attention to the video feed, they saw Sona leap towards Dix with a malevolent aura and swung her halberd at him with a strength far higher than her normal state.
Dix was shocked at her appearance and strength and was barely able to dodge her attack. Fels also tried to call out to her but it was as if she couldn't hear anything and just went after Dix.
Afraid, Dix took back his curse and recovered his original stats, but even in a berserk state, Sona's halberd arts were still effective, pushing Dix further back and injuring him.
With the curse removed, the Xenos returned to their normal state of mind and saw what's going on, and started pushing back the Ikelos Familia members. On the other hand, without their leader, the Ikelos Familia became like headless chickens, dispersing into the man-made Dungeon in an attempt to escape from their assailants.
Some of them even had the 'great' idea of taking a weakened Xenos from their cage and using it as hostage while they made their way to the surface. They thought that once they reached the surface, all the other people would be their allies and help them kill the lured Xenos.
Unfortunately for Dix, before such an idea could bloom in his mind, he had to escape being beheaded by the rampaging Sona.
Sona dropped back down to her knees and tried calming herself. She avoided using Magic as she knew she wouldn't be able to control it. After a few minutes of meditation, Sona was able to calm down significantly and the partial white mask fell off from her face and disappeared. However, her left eye was still in a Hollow state, signifying that the Hollowfication was still affecting her mind.
Even then, she was able to think more clearly, albeit, a bit dizzy. As she made her way through the Dungeon, Fels and some other Xenos caught up to her and explained the situation. Sona immediately figured out what they were planning and urged everyone not to go to the surface and return to the Dungeon. But they couldn't do that as their path to retreat was already closed off.
Without much choice, Sona and the others headed off to the surface to try and take the other Xenos back, but she was already too late as they were being surrounded by numerous Adventurers, including the Loki Familia, due to the ruckus the Ikelos Familia had created.
When they reached the surface, Sona was shocked that Tanis was standing between an injured Xenos and an Adventurer who's about to land a finishing blow.
Outside of her expectations and knowledge, Serafall didn't know why Ophis suddenly brought Tanis to this battlefield with the video showing that Ophis was standing and watching from a far away building.
The three who are watching were also shocked at this development with Yoruichi and Kuroka looking at Kisuke to clear it up.
Kisuke, however, could only shake his head, "I also don't know what she was thinking. All that I'm sure of is that this is pretty important for Ophis as I specifically told her that if she needed to do something important, she doesn't need to hesitate."
When Sona saw that Finn's spear was aimed at Tanis, she immediately threw her halberd to intercept his attack, which was successful and caused the battlefield to temporarily stagnate at her appearance and action.
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